The chief executive of the Dunedin biotechnology company, Barry Richardson, said the agreement gave Frutarom access to Blis' K12 probiotic product, which it will market and promote as a nutraceutical and food ingredient to its global client network.
"You won't see Blis K12, you'll see K12 go into the final marketing company's product," he said in an interview.
Dr Richardson said it would be included in lozenges, drink, powder formula and possibly yoghurt and promoted as a probiotic prevention of upper airways infection, bacterial sore throats, tooth and gum disease and chronic bad breath.
Initially, it would be promoted in North America, followed by Europe and Asia early next year.
This latest agreement was in addition to a contract with Nestle, which gave it the right to use the K12 ingredient in its infant formula.
"It's big. Nestle is a significant development, but that's still about potential and involves development. This is about sales of product to customers."
The Frutarom agreement allowed Blis to concentrate on product development, Dr Richardson said, with the company given global responsibility for all sales, marketing, warehousing and distribution.
The company employs 1500 people in 120 countries and services 10,000 customers worldwide.
Eventually, other Blis products could follow K12 into the Frutarom network.
"It really sets us up. Instead of a small marketing team in New Zealand, we'll have an international marketing team."
The international promotion of K12 would begin this Thursday at the Supply Side West show in Las Vegas.
The company's health division vice-president, Laurent Leduc, said in a statement the deal was significant given the product's safety and "excellent record of clinical validation".
It had no peer products in the market and the technology was protected by patents, he said.
Blis can continue to promote its own retail-branded products, and recently sent a shipment of its product range to an Irish pharmacy distributor, which would be introduced in the next few months.
Dr Richardson said this deal was complementary to the Frutarom contract and the Irish market was similar in size to New Zealand's.
Blis has already made its first sales to Frutarom and Dr Richardson said he expected to see a "significant" increase in sales over the next few months.
Frutarom is a flavour and fine ingredients company, established in 1933 to provide ingredients for the food, beverage, flavour, fragrance, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, food additive and cosmetic industries.
It is listed on both the London and Tel Aviv stock exchanges.
